Why is SEO so important for hotels?
Today customers mostly rely on search engines to help them find hotels in certain cities. For example, according to Google Ads Keyword Planner, the search volume for “hotels in London” is 15K, “Berlin hotels” is 2.1K, “New York hotels” is 25K.
But even for these specific queries, there is very high competition. Look how many search results Google returns for “New York hotels”.
The truth is that only 10 of those 1.690 000 mln hotels are visible. The rest are buried in the safest second page of Google, and beyond.
What makes the difference between the websites in the tops ten and on other pages?
SEO – the process of proving to Google that your page is most relevant for a particular query provides useful content and the best hotel guest experience.
As you can see, the hospitality industry is very saturated in many cities. When someone is searching for a hotel in your city, they may get hundreds and thousands of results, and sometimes millions like in New York. Therefore, SEO gives you chances to outrank your competitors and attract the most direct bookings possible from Google searches.
1. Find the right keywords for your hotel SEO
A keyword is a term or query that people search for on Google or other search engines. If your homepage is optimized for this keyword, your website could still rank organically in less competitive markets and you can reap the benefits.
There are lots of keyword research tools available to find the best keyword for the winning hotel SEO. Here is a list of free tools:
- Google Keyword Planner.
- Google’s built-in search suggestions.
- Google Trends.
- Ubersuggest.
Professional SEO managers prefer using premium tools such as Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz.
There are three main parameters to choose the keywords for successful hotel SEO:
- Search volume – how many times users are searching for a certain product or service per month.
- Keyword difficulty – shows whether the competition is strong.
- Clicks – how many clicks users make in the search results. When the number of clicks is higher than the search volume, it means, there is a good opportunity for this hotel SEO keyword.
2. Write unique page titles and descriptions
Titles and descriptions are two of the most important on-page elements in SEO.
Titles (the professional term is Title tag) are the text elements in the top line of a web browser, specifying the titles of a page.
Descriptions (the professional term is meta description tag) are the text elements that provide a summary of a page. Here is an example:
Meta title and description tags are considered important as they help search engines understand what the page is about. Besides that, they are the first impression many people have of your page.
Writing meta title and description tags effectively is a high-impact SEO task. Below you will find critical hotel SEO recommendations for your booking website:
– text length: title tags – up to 60 characters, description tags – up to 160 characters;
– use the keyword;
– keep unique titles and descriptions on your website;
– write for your hotel guests.
3. Create keyword-rich highly-relevant content
Another strong strategy for effective SEO in the hotel industry is to prepare keyword-rich relevant and unique content for your landing pages and blog.
Generally speaking, content gives a great place to place the keywords you are targeting. And these keywords will bring potential clients to your website from Google search results. For example, if you intend to rank highly for the phrase “hotels in London”, you might publish a landing page that contains this phrase a few times.
But content can also help with your hotel SEO in a few other ways, too. Consider this: potential hotel guests who are researching broader, travel-related topics are likely to need a hotel. So, if you write a blog post about some great restaurants or tourist attractions in your areas, you might rank for some of the keywords contained there – like “restaurants in London” and so on.
If you put some call-to-action elements in the blog posts like this, the people who are already interested in traveling to London may find it convenient, now that they are already on your hotel’s website, to book a stay with you.
4. Localize pages to improve your hotel customer experience
According to recent consumer research, 87% of online users prefer doing shopping in their language. This applies to online hotel industries.
If you expect to have guests from different countries, or you already spotted some organic traffic from other countries on Google Analytics report, then it means it is time for you to consider localizing some landing pages or blog posts relevant for the target audience speaking different languages.
Website localization is a complex process. It starts with discussing technical questions. As a rule, if your website is built on WordPress, you will have to consider quite a lot of options to set up a multilingual hotel website.
Afterward, it is necessary to find a language specialist with an area of expertise in SEO. You do not need to translate a website or transcreate it. You will have to find a localization specialist who will bring new visitors from other countries to your hotel website.
Here is a list of best practices from a professional provider of website translation services all over the world. By following these steps of the initialization process, you are sure to get the right website localization:
- Define the countries and languages the website visitors are coming to your website.
- Find a professional localization services provider, avoid translation services.
- Ask the localization specialist to provide a detailed list of keywords relevant to your target market.
- Ask the localization specialist to carry out competitor research and prepare their website analysis.
- Approve the keyword mapping in the target language before starting the localization.
5. Optimize page speed load time and performance
Today website visitors do not like websites with poor load speeds or inadequate performance.
Generally speaking, page speed is a critical factor in hotel SEO, since it has a significant impact on how long visitors stay on your website and how many of them will make bookings and convert to your hotel guests.
According to Google studies, online users leave a website if that takes longer than three seconds to load.
You can find a list of actions in many articles on how to speed up your website. As a rule, these issues could be easily solved by changing your hosting provider and installing optimization plugins.
Here is a list of the most popular plugins that will for sure resolve the speed load time and performance for your hotel SEO:
1) WordPress:
- WP Rocket;
- Autoptimize;
2) Drupal:
- advance.
Get more rooms booked with SEO for hotels and social media marketing
As you see, SEO is crucial to success in the hotel industry. High hotel SEO rankings allow you to be on the top of search results, get more quality traffic, and ultimately improve your hotel direct bookings.
Hotel websites that rank on the first page of Google attract more than90% of all traffic for given search results in a particular country. If your hotel’s website shows up on the 2nd page, potential traffic is limited to around 5%.
With this in mind, by following the above-mentioned hotel SEO tips, you will have more chances to sell your hotel rooms and revenues.
We are in this together!
I need to let you all know that we are in on this together. If you need to vent, talk, cry, or just have some to talk with then I am here listening. Since I am working part-time at the local Kroger, I will to the best of my ability to work it out around my schedule.
But you can reach me here:
Email: hotelblogger@aremorch.com
Also, join us at our Facebook Group – Hotel Social Media Community
We will get through this unprecedented event together! #hotelstrong #hospitalitystrong
For any specific information on COVID-19, I recommend go to CDC, WHO, AHLA, AAHOA, and HSMAI. Also, follow information from your local authorities.
NOTE
We are starting to reopen some hotels again (Yay!!!). Make sure you follow their guidelines and say THANK YOU to those that now show a unique spirit to serve, and helps us all get through this!! #hotelstrong #hospitalitystrong
About Are Morch
Hi, I am Are Morch. Your Digital Marketing Coach and Customer Experience Expert specializes in creating effective digital customer experience offer for hotels while growing and scale customer acquisition and revenue.
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